It is conventional to incorporate fine powdery grains (matting agent) into the protective layer of a silver halide photographic material to increase the surface roughness of the material so as to reduce self-sticking of the material, to reduce sticking of the photographic material to processing devices, and to improve the antistatic properties of the material and the vacuum adhesiveness of the material in contact exposures to prevent Newton's rings.
To reduce the vacuum contact time in contact exposures of photographic materials and to improve the transportability of such materials to satisfy desired improvements in the processability of the materials, it is necessary to enlarge the grain size of the grains of the matting agent to be incorporated into the material or to increase the amount of the matting agent to be incorporated into the material. However, such enlargement or increase causes reduction of the transparency of the photographic material (film) due to depression of the light transmission through the material or due to scattering of the light applied to the material.
In addition, increasing the surface roughness of the material would often damage the skin of the operator handling the material or damage the cylinders and other parts of devices to be used for processing the material.
Given this situation, it has been greatly desired to develop a matting agent which is effective for reducing the vacuum contact time for photographic materials and improving the adhesiveness and transportability of photographic materials while having less influence on the transparency of the material (film) and on the skin of operators handling the material, (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,855,219).